The Bob Marshall wildlands complex is proposed public/private conservation area in northwest Adirondack Park, centered around Five Ponds Wilderness, which includes the biggest block (50,000 acres) of unlogged forest in the Northeast. This especially wild part of the wildest landscape in the East could become a half-million-acre nearly road-free area, providing safe habitat for the full range of native species, including extirpated apex predators like Wolf and Puma. It is a watery landscape with scores of lakes, ponds, and rivers, including the fabled Oswegatchie River.
In our paradigm-setting 2020 VISION series published three decades ago, early Adirondack Council leaders proposed creation of a roughly 410,000 acre Bob Marshall Great Wilderness, in the northwest quadrant of Adirondack Park. We recommended this was where Wolves could be restored to Adirondack Park, and also suggested it might provide some of the habitat needed for recovery of Cougar, Lynx, and Wolverine. We’ve since come to see that some of this proposed wilderness will likely remain in private hands far into the future, but that private lands conservation can be as good for wildlife as public lands conservation. The Council now advocates completing “the Bob” partly through additional acquisitions for the Forest Preserve, partly through strong conservation easements on private lands, held by land trusts and/or the state. Were a Wolf pair lucky enough to make the difficult journey southeast from Algonquin Park, they likely would settle and raise their family in the Bob Marshall wildlands complex. Other shy and wide-ranging species who could benefit from stronger protection of this wildlands complex include Brook and Lake Trout, American Eel, American Marten, boreal birds, and perhaps Lynx or possibly even Wolverine, if climate warming does not preclude recovery of these boreal species. Protecting the largest piece of land currently for sale in Adirondack Park, the 35,000-acre Whitney estate, is critical to completing the Bob Marshall wildlands complex.